Second child coming - what am I in for?

When our first was born, they told me to announce the gender. As I was looking through a camera lens that had gone out of focus, only to knock my glasses off my head when I lowered said camera, it took a good 5-6 seconds to determine it was a girl.

The second we learned ahead of time and the third, well, I saw his junk before I saw his face.

 

First night home last night. Borderline disaster compared to my first.
I stayed up to feed her at 1 a.m. Of course, the nipple on the bottle popped off. Some of the formula ended up on her, most ended up on me.
Went upstairs and put dry pajamas on her, brought her back downstairs. Resumed feeding. After a while, I felt a couple toots, so I laid her down on the love seat to change her. Little poop, NBD; had her wiped up, pulled the diaper out and boom, she unleashes the fury on the unprotected couch. This is around 2 a.m., btw.
I resume cleaning her up, put her in the swing and take the cushion covers off to throw them in the wash. Come upstairs and she's still wide awake. I hold her for a little and then around 2:45 try the swing again. She falls asleep. I bring her upstairs and she starts grunting and moaning when I put her down. I say fuck it. Lay down. Try to sleep. She starts crying and wakes my wife up.
Wife calms her, we both fall asleep and at 5:30, both woken up by cries. Wife says I got her, feeds her, I go back to sleep and then wake up at 7:30 when No. 1 starts yelling at us that she has to go potty (she has never climbed out of her crib; it's amazing).
So basically, right now, I'm wondering what the fuck I got myself into.

 

I hope the youngest never hears mom say that. Talk about being fucked up afterward.

 

Hearing that she said that colossally fucked up my friend. By all counts they had a good marriage for 15 years, she desperately wanted a third even though her second pregnancy was filled with drama. She went nuts shortly after kid No. 3 was born. She left for four days without anyone knowing where she was. She came back, blamed post-partum, was fine for a couple months. Then last year, on the day after my friend got his annual bonus (usually in the six-figure range) she emptied their joint accounts and filed for divorce.

Obviously, I'm not suggesting that's the norm. I love hearing about someone like LTL who has done it without that level of drama.

 

The thing is, when you only have two you can play man-to-man. Once you have the third, mom and dad have to play zone. Playing zone is a sign of weakness, and some of the better kids teams know how to exploit that.

 

I just wanted to avoid having a middle child.

 

Once you have that third one, they just kill you with the screens and picks.

 

After this next one, I'm gonna be too damn old for a third. Christ, I'm gonna be eligible for Social Security by the time this next one is still in college.

 

That was a big thing for us to. I got married when I was 31, had our first less than a year later and our second 20 months after that. We didn't want to deal with the risks of having kids in our late 30s. We have two close friends who found out early on that they were going to have a special needs kid, both were in their late 30s at the time. One had the kid and the other "miscarried"

I can't imagine ever having to make a decision like that. We had two healthy kids and didn't want to push our luck.